HONOLULU -- Lawson, the second largest convenience store chains in Japan after 7-Eleven, opened two stores in Hawaii over the weekend, marking its official entry in the U.S. market.
The first two outlets in Honolulu will be tenants of the Sheraton Waikiki Hotel and the Moana Surfrider Westin Resort & Spa, and they will be directly managed by a local Lawson subsidiary, Lawson USA Hawaii Inc., formed in January.
When the Lawson Station stores were announced in April, the company said that it planned to open up to 50 stores on Hawaii, as well as an undisclosed number on the mainland (see Related Content below for previous CSP Daily News coverage).
"This is a big step for us, Lawson USA, so that's why I'm kind of excited," Rey Toshinaga, Lawson Station manager, told KHON-TV.
The Sheraton Waikiki store is a 2,100-square-foot location, and the Moana Surfrider store is smaller, said the report.
Locally, the company will target Japanese tourists who are already familiar with the stores, the report said.
Lawson Station will compete with nearly 40 ABC Stores in Waikiki. Officials at ABC Stores declined to comment to KHON.
Toshinaga said there will be a big difference between the two companies. "We're going to present kind of a different customer service, such as in Japan; we have high-quality customer service," he told the news outlet.
The company has hired 50 employees locally, with plans of opening up to 30 stores on Oahu over the next three years, and possibly more on the Neighbor Islands, said the report.
"As we expand, we will hire more and hope that the people who were hired here can become store managers for our next stores so that it will be a more exciting job for those who work here," Tetsu Yamada, senior vice-president of Lawson International, told KITV in a separate report.
"It's not exactly like the Lawson you know and love," added a report by Nonstop Honolulu. "Yes, they have their famous onigiri and oden, a selection of quick Japanese snacks and Japanese toiletries, but it's really designed to be convenient for Japanese tourists. There is a mix of American snacks and drinks, and--most important for the visitors--souvenirs and products from Hawaii."
Click here for Nonstop Honolulu slideshows featuring the Japanese and American products that Lawson Station stores will carry in the United States, and watch the embedded video for its visit to the grand opening of the Waikiki store.
Lawson has more than 10,000 c-stores in Japan and more than 400 in China and Indonesia. But the Japanese retail giant actually has its origins in the United States.
According to Lawson's website, the company name of Lawson and its trademark white milk can against a blue background date back to 1939 in Ohio, where J. J. Lawson ran a dairy milk store. "Mr. Lawson's milk store" was locally renowned for its fresh milk, and many customers came to buy milk there every morning. J. J. Lawson subsequently established Lawson Milk Co. and developed this into a chain of stores selling various commodities including daily necessities mainly in the Northeast. In 1959, Lawson Milk Co. became an affiliate of the American food giant Consolidated Foods Inc. (late renamed Sara Lee Corp.) and continued to widely expand its network of stores.
Lawson's operations in Japan began with the opening of the first Lawson store in Sakurazuka near Osaka in June 1975, added the company's website. At that time, Daiei, which was the parent company of Lawson, had entered into a consulting agreement with Consolidated Foods. The first Lawson store in Japan was established as part of a franchise system. The first store sold party foods on an American theme and was very different from the Lawson stores of today. In September 1975, the first franchise store, the "Momoyama Store," opened, heralding the full-scale deployment of the franchise chain.
Consolidated Foods sold Lawson in 1985 to Enfield, Conn.-based Dairy Mart, which rebranded the stores. In 2002, Laval, Quebec-based Alimentation Couche-Tard bought Dairy Mart and converted the stores to Circle K.
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